Searching for the Real (Part II)
Seeing the fake plastic trees, fake eddy pools, and the death of The Real.
Thanks to Chris and all the other new subscribers. This work ain’t free—there are some real hard costs behind it—and I couldn’t do it without you. If you’re not a subscriber, and you’re still on the fence,
Or if you’d like to skip the free trial period,
Subscribers have full access to paywall pieces like The House of Ash, We Were Not Made for Limitlessness, and my full novel, Bears in the Yard (Part I and Part II).
Continuation from Searching for the Real (Part I)
…You wonder whether you’re real enough to enter that cave, and if you are, you wonder: What gifts do I bring to it? You wonder and wonder and wonder and wonder, and this wondering becomes both hope and nightmare.
Nightmare? Yes. I said it.
Fake Plastic Trees and Other Unnatural Nightmares
She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love.~Radiohead
We have entered a new era. We’ve traded board games for virtual reality, cigarettes for vapes, The Real for The Artificial. In that era, The Real Ones haven’t just hidden in a cave. They’ve been driven there.
What distinguishes this artificial age from, say, the artificial suburban of life lived by so many over the last seven decades? Today’s artificial isn’t the consumerist kitsch of the 1950s. It’s not all rubber plants or the millions of fake knockers Radiohead wrote of in “Fake Plastic Trees,” either. (Oh, those quaint artifacts of our human obsession with unreal pleasures). The Artificial—this modern version—lacks the plasticine aftertaste or odor of previous consumeristic iterations. It is increasingly indistinguishable from The Real.
While driving back from my son’s basketball game on a Saturday afternoon, my phone vibrates. I grab it from the dash, tap the notification, and wait for facial recognition to unlock the app.
The message: “Dude, we’re f***ed.”
It’s a text from Brian, and as soon as I read it, another message pops up. This time, it’s a link to some new application called Sora. I click and read. Sora is “an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions.” This is OpenAI’s latest offering, a companion to its Large Language Model, ChatGPT. While trying to comprehend what I’m reading, Brian sends another text.
“Like, watch these—these are 100% AI-generated. The drone shots… ugh. I literally can’t tell.” He attaches links to several videos, and I can sense his steroidal anxiety raging on the other end of our text thread.
As a professional photographer and videographer, Brian has carved out a living telling visual stories. He’s used his skills to drive successful marketing campaigns. He’s produced video content—web content, commercials, personal-brand videos—for people across the country. He knows his craft, and I sense these videos pose an existential threat to that craft.
I navigate to the drone footage of Santorini, and press play.
Sweet Moses. It’s good.
The footage is almost indistinguishable from the real Santorini, except it’s almost too perfect. The motion is a touch too smooth, and the whole scene has a quality that I can only describe as sterile. But if I didn’t know it was AI-generated, would I have thought twice about it? Would I have assumed it was real drone footage? The truth is, I’m not savvy enough to tell the difference between the real Santorini and this artificial one.
I scroll to another video, this one of Big Sur. I watch the waves fold like satin sheets, notice the physics in the eddy swirling in the rock cut. This has to be real, except it’s not. It’s entirely artificial, and not artificial in the sense that it was created by some CGI artist at Pixar. This was created by a silicone brain burning electrical calories and fueled by a complex cache of self-learning code. This is artificial art.
I watch it again and again, looking for some glitch, but the glitch must be in my brain because I want to visit this place. I want to enter the machine, swim in that artificial eddy pool, visit the artificial building perched on the artificial cliff. I want to enjoy the artificial company spending an artificial weekend away in this artificial paradise. I want to look through artificial binoculars, watch the artificial whales migrating to some other artificial coast. It’s that good.
(Click here to view all Sora videos.)
I scroll back to the top of the Sora website, where I read,
We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction.
Introducing Sora, our text-to-video model. Sora can generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality and adherence to the user’s prompt.
The implications are mind-melting. Need some footage of Santorini at night? Put in the prompt. Need a thirty-second video clip of a dental hygienist cleaning teeth? Put in the prompt. Need some B-roll of a woman writing in her journal, Bible open beside her, cup of coffee steaming at the top right of the frame? Put in the prompt.
And this precise thing—the application and proliferation of The Artificial in imagery—leads to Brian’s creative angst.
Words I’d use to describe Brian: Doer; Scrapper; Scrounger; Hustler. He knows the storytelling game and how to do it through a lens. This is how he’s carved out a living through photography and videography over the last two decades. What’s more, he’s followed the development of Artificial Intelligence over the last fifteen years, and to this point, he’s been unafraid. This Christmas he even used an AI image generator to insert wrapped packages into his family Christmas card. So, shouldn’t he see Sora as an opportunity instead of a threat? Couldn’t he use it to streamline productions, cut contractors, tell more immersive stories, and ultimately increase his business revenue? I suppose. But to use his words, this new capability is an order of magnitude bigger than any AI system he’s ever seen, and the more users hop on the bandwagon, the faster it’ll learn. The faster it learns the better it will become. And if it becomes much better, videographers, product photographers, scriptwriters, and visual stories could all be… what’s the word Brian used?
Done.
“The thought crossed my mind,” he texts, “that I need to sell all my gear now while it still has value and maybe invest in off-grid solar and well water.”
I consider asking him to feed that prompt to Sora—A former video producer freaked out by AI selling everything and moving to South Dakota—but I catch myself. Too soon, I think. And besides, the Sorapocalypse isn’t upon us yet. It won’t be available to the public for months.
The Talking Heads
Over the last week, I’ve read, watched, and listened to the Sora commentary. Some say “Get on the train early, learn the system, and don’t get left behind.” They intimate this kind of technology will allow for more personalized ads. A few have speculated that within a decade, we’ll have personalized, prompt-driven movies. (Hey Sora, I’d like a John Wick prequel shot in the style of Terrance Malick costarring Audrey Hepburn as Jane Wick.) They wax poetic in rapturesque phrases without any thought of a potential creative doomsday.
Witness the birth of a new religion.
Others have been more skeptical, citing fears about deep fakes. Imagine the potential, they say, for a political attack or personal blackmail. Worse, imagine the potential for politicians (and the would-be blackmailed) to skirt any accountability for their very real sins because “Fake news… that video of me in the hotel room is AI-generated.” With the rise of deepfake videos, imagine the dystopian hellscape of misinformation and manipulation, particularly one driven by social media algorithms.
See the algorithm boost The Artificial.
See the people galvanize behind The Artificial.
See The Artificial Revolution.
The Artificial Age is coming. See all the fake plastic trees. See the masses calling those trees real or at least not caring that they aren’t. See yourself wishing to fall into the eddy pool at Big Sur. Feel yourself drowning in it.
(To be continued…)
The Search for Visual Language
I’m continuing my quest to develop a visual language for telling the story of my homeplace, the Arkansas Ozarks. Want to play a part in that search?
There are millions of old cameras that need a good home. Maybe you have an old film cameras—both medium format and 35mm—you’d like to unload (and in all seriousness, let me know if you have one you’d be willing to sell). Feel free to email me if you have any equipment you’d like toss my way.
Thanks again for reading. If you’ve enjoyed my writing…
No answers here. More questions. Perhaps one posture: keep seeking the good, true, beautiful, and REAL.
AI “art” makes my skin crawl. But, I firmly believe creativity is the Christian’s birthright and we creatives, empowered by the Creator, have an opportunity to turn the very real and dire threat of AI into a reorienting vision for our creative work. AI may have our last word, but we have the new words, the new images, the new ideas. We can resist by refusing to let AI scare us away from what is ours—it is we who are created in the image of God. Romans 1:22, 25, “Professing to be wise, they became fools . . . For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” AI can’t dream. So, dream big, friends! And keep creating!